Boston considers dropping busing

Posted: Saturday, January 23, 1999

By Robin EstrinAssociated Press

BOSTON -- Twenty-five years after racial violence erupted in Boston over court-ordered desegregation, the city is considering abandoning widespread busing and sending students to their neighborhood schools again.

The reason: White flight and a burgeoning immigrant population have dramatically changed the racial makeup in many parts of Boston.

Blacks, Hispanics and Asians now constitute about 85 percent of the city's 64,000 public school students, up from about 48 percent when busing began.

As a result, most areas of the city -- including the once lily-white South Boston, where the worst trouble took place in the early 1970s -- are now racially and ethnically diverse.

The change has prompted Mayor Thomas M. Menino to propose building five new schools in the city and returning to ''walk-to schools.''

The proposal has some people concerned that it will simply be a return to the old days. After all, integration is still not complete. Roxbury, one of Boston's poorest sections, is almost uniformly black; West Roxbury, one of the wealthiest, is almost uniformly white.

''If you're not paying attention to what goes on, history has a tendency to repeat itself,'' Leonard Alkins, president of the Boston branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said Friday.

In 1972, the NAACP sued the city, charging that black children weren't getting an equal education. What resulted was court-ordered busing and the enduring images of parents hurling epithets and rocks at school buses.

As in other U.S. cities, many whites pulled their children out of the public schools. Others moved to the suburbs. As the white population dwindled, the minority population boomed. Immigrants from Asia, Africa and Latin America poured into Boston, and had a higher birth rate than the whites.

Ten years ago, Boston was released from direct court supervision, but there are monitoring committees to ensure that the schools maintain racial balance. If they do not, the city can be hauled back into court.

The city came up with a new racial-balance formula, still in place today, that bases school assignments on race and parent choice. About two-thirds of the school system's students are now bused under this formula.

But because of Boston's large minority population, ''you're taking predominantly minority children and putting them on a bus, shuffling the deck,'' and sending them schools that are mostly minority anyway, said City Councilor Peggy Davis-Mullen, who is white and represents South Boston.

Under the current formula, parents more often than not opt against the school down the street. But the mayor believes more parents will want to send their children to schools nearby if new buildings are added to the equation.

Even under the mayor's plan, busing would still be necessary because of a shortage of schools.

The proposal needs the approval of the school board. But the plan is still being drawn up, and no vote is scheduled.

The renewed discussion about busing is so far proving far less controversial than in the 1970s. School board meetings and public hearings on the subject have drawn few participants.

Many black leaders now believe that integration -- while important -- is less crucial than fixing the school system, which is plagued by poor test scores and other problems.

''People want a quality education system and if it means they have to put their kid on a yellow bus, they will do it,'' said Loretta Roach, executive director of City Wide Educational Coalition, which was appointed by the federal courts to monitor Boston's racial compliance.

Jennifer Reyes, 15, has been bused her whole life, and doesn't mind.

''With busing, you have more of a choice what school you want to go to, instead of just having to go to the one near your house,'' she said.